Mr Marvel's Miracle

‘He was so bad he was good.’ This was our thought-provoking writing prompt at Weymouth Writing Matters last week. I generally use a great deal of dialogue in my flash fiction stories, but this one is dialogue-free. Just for a change.

Show business had become a sad disappointment to him. After all this time, Mr Marvel, Magician Extraordinaire, was at a loss. The collection of magic tricks he had learned from his late uncle had served him well in the early years, delighted the audiences – but there was no doubt it was all looking a little stale and well-worn these days. Audiences expected more sophisticated tricks, but he was not an inventive man and no amount of effort on his part could produce anything fresh. I am a copyist, he told himself sadly, not a true artiste of any sort.
And then there were all those blessed animals. The white rabbit had taken great exception to being lifted out of the hat by its ears last Wednesday matinee. In consequence it had bitten him so badly on the thumb that he had needed stitches. He was still trying to get the bloodstains out of his white waistcoat. And then there had been that unfortunate incident when the white mice had escaped into the orchestra pit. The screams of the lady harpist still haunted him. And now Bella the white dove had laid an egg and gone huffy. It was all too bad.
Audiences were starting to snigger when they should have been wide-eyed with amazement, and Mr Marvel had no wish to become the type of performer who played lame magic tricks for laughs – who was so bad he was good, as they say. Perhaps, he thought, it is time to give it all up.
Still, he was not a man to shirk his obligations, and he appeared on stage that evening, wearing a debonair smile, and gave the best performance he could. The animals behaved themselves, and he thanked each one politely for its co-operation – until he reached the final trick. Mr Marvel peered into the top hat. Where the dickens was Bella? He couldn’t detect her presence anywhere. Drat that bird! Playing for time, he waved his magician’s wand and said ‘Abracadabra’. Twice. The audience became restive, stamping their feet – until at last a dove flew out of the hat. And then another, and another and another. Mr Marvel watched in utter surprise. Within the minute, forty, fifty or more white doves were fluttering above him. The crowd went wild. He waved the wand again and the birds dissolved into a shower of silver stars and vanished.
Where had they come from? Mr Marvel didn’t know. Where they had gone he knew even less. Was it possible he had accidentally performed a feat of genuine magic? He didn’t know that either. But it made him feel like a real magician, and his dismal thoughts of giving up dissolved and vanished, just as the birds had. The show would most definitely be going on for Mr Marvel, Magician Extraordinaire.

My new short story collection, Mr Muggington’s Discovery and Other Stories is out now http://tinyurl.com/hec25gr. For further gentle humour: The Larus Trilogy – Isle of Larus myBook.to/MyAmazonLinks , Sea of Clouds myBook.to/MyAmazonBooks and All the Wild Weather (to be published later this year).